Chapter 6 - What My Father Left Unsaid
The hallway behind the dining room was narrow and too bright. The fluorescents buzzed over the ice machine and the stacked bus tubs, and the air smelled like lemon sanitizer and old carpet. I stood there with my tray still in my hand and realized I was breathing too fast.
Marisol pushed through the double doors with two dirty plates balanced on her forearm. She glanced at me, then at the dining room behind her.
"You okay?" she said. "You look like you saw a ghost."
I tried to smile. "I'm fine. Just need water."
She nodded and kept moving toward the kitchen. I set my tray down on the shelf by the bus station and pressed my palms flat against the cool stainless edge until my hands stopped shaking. I could still see the ring when I closed my eyes. Gold, thick at the band. A blue stone the size of a thumbnail. It had caught the daylight from the windows when he lifted his glass.
I walked to the locker area at the end of the hall. It wasn't really a locker room, just an alcove with a row of gray metal lockers, a bench with one wobbly leg, and a corkboard covered in shift swaps and health insurance flyers. My locker was second from the end. I didn't open it at first. I just sat down on the bench and stared at the scuff marks on the floor.
I needed to think about what I actually knew.
At home, in the second drawer of my dresser under my socks, I kept a manila envelope. Three photographs. Not an album. Just three.
The first one was my dad holding me on a county fairground. I must have been four or five. He had me up on his shoulders and I was gripping his forehead like handlebars. He was laughing, his mouth open. On his left hand, wrapped around my ankle to steady me, the ring was clear. Gold with that dark blue center. The sun had hit it and made a little white flare in the picture.
The second one was at a kitchen table in an apartment I barely remembered. The wallpaper had little blue flowers. He was sitting with a birthday cake in front of him, one of those grocery store cakes with the plastic divider. He wasn't smiling in that one, just looking tired. His hands were flat on the table on either side of the cake. The ring was on his left hand again. You could see the stone even in the bad lighting.
The third one was him standing next to an old pickup. One arm resting on the open door. His hair was longer then. Same ring. Same hand.
Every photograph. That was what I'd said to Richard, and sitting on that bench, I made myself check it. Was it true? I only had three photos left. But in all three, yes. The ring was there. I hadn't imagined that part.
I leaned back against the lockers. The metal was cold through my shirt.
What else did I know about Thomas Hale? I tried to list it the way I'd count my tips at the end of a shift. Real things only.
His name was Thomas Hale. He worked construction when he could get it, and maintenance jobs when he couldn't. He drove that pickup until the transmission went. He made pancakes on Sundays and burned the first one every time. He told me not to run with wet socks on tile. He had a scar on his right thumb from a table saw. He coughed a lot in the winter.
He was gone when I was seven. That was all I let myself say for a long time. Gone.
What didn't I know? That list was longer, and it embarrassed me.
I didn't know where he was born. I didn't know if he had brothers. He never talked about family, not once that I could remember. I didn't know where my mom was in any of that story. There were no pictures of her in the envelope. When I asked about her as a kid, he'd gone quiet and changed the subject, and after a while I stopped asking. I told myself it didn't matter. Now, sitting there in my work shirt and skirt with my name tag crooked, it mattered a lot.
I didn't know where the ring came from. He never told me. I didn't know if it was his or borrowed or what it meant to him. I just knew he'd worn it.
The ice machine kicked on and rattled. Someone laughed out in the kitchen. I heard the clink of glasses being racked.
I felt the pull to make the story bigger than it was. To tell myself I remembered Dad talking about a brother named Richard, or about a hotel, or about water out a big window. I didn't. If I was honest, my memories of him were small and ordinary. Hands. Pancakes. The smell of sawdust and gas station coffee. Nothing that would help a man in a navy suit decide if I was his niece.
I wouldn't invent anything to please him. I said that to myself once, quietly, and then again because I needed to hear it stay true. I wouldn't fill in gaps just because he looked at me like I was an answer.
I stood up and opened my locker. My purse was on the top shelf, my phone tucked inside. My apartment keys. A pack of gum. No photographs. They were at home in that drawer. For a second I thought about calling my manager and asking if I could run home on my break, but I knew I couldn't. The lunch rush hadn't even peaked, and I'd already stepped away too long.
Besides, I didn't want to walk back into that dining room carrying photos like proof. Not yet.
I checked my reflection in the little mirror I'd stuck inside the locker door. My eyes were still red, but I looked calmer. I straightened my name tag. LILY. I smoothed my ponytail.
I needed a plan for the next time he talked to me. Because there would be a next time. He was still out there by the windows, and I still had tables to cover.
I wouldn't start with my story. I'd start with his. If he was who he said he was, he'd know things no stranger could guess. Not feelings. Facts. Where Thomas grew up. What kind of work he did before I was born. Why they lost touch. When he last saw him. He'd have to tell me something real first, something I could check against what little I had.
And I wouldn't tell him I had no mom in the story, not right away. That felt too private to hand over to a man I just met. I'd keep that part back until I knew if I could trust him.
I closed the locker and locked it. The click sounded loud in the alcove.
May you like
My break would come in maybe an hour. I could talk then, near the windows, where other people could see us but not hear us. Five minutes. That was all I'd give it. I wouldn't cry again if I could help it.
I picked up my tray from the shelf and headed back toward the double doors. The dining room light spilled out under them, warm and bright after the hallway. I took a breath and pushed through.
